By Chris B.
BEACON HILL, MA – In 2024, as Israel escalated its genocide in Gaza and the political establishment ran cover, State Senator John Velis (D – Westfield) and Rep. Simon Cataldo (D – Concord) led Massachusetts legislators to authorize a state-level Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism. The Commission was charged with holding public hearings, reporting its findings, and recommending how to combat antisemitism to the Legislature by the end of November 2025. But in its most publicized hearing, the Commission called to the stand representatives of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), the statewide educators’ union, to scrutinize an internally shared list of resources for member education on Israel/Palestine.
The amendment passed in a political environment where hate crimes and violence against minority groups, including Jewish people, are rising. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), often seen as an authority on antisemitism, claims 2024 as a high-water mark for antisemitic incidents recorded in a year. But that statistic is misleading. The ADL, a pro-Israel organization so explicitly Zionist and outwardly political that Wikipedia no longer considers it a reliable source for citations, equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. But while antisemitism is a form of white supremacist hatred against Jews historically tied with the political right (e.g., Hitler’s Third Reich or auto tycoon Henry Ford), critics of Zionism take a historical materialist analysis of the settler colonial ideology behind the modern Israeli statehood project. As the United Nations recognized the state of Israel in 1948 as a post-World War II settlement in the wake of the Holocaust, they also granted official superpower backing to the Zionist political movement for a Jewish ethnostate, which took for granted the annihilation, expulsion, and subjugation of the native Palestinian population. The U.S. and its allies have continued to support Israel primarily for their own colonial interests, since it serves as a friendly military outpost in the Middle East, a key shipping route and oil-rich region, even as blatant land grabs, civilian slaughter, and other abuses occur daily.
The MTA is no stranger to fury from the ruling class, Republican or Democratic. Democrat Governor Maura Healey, leading a consensus of state legislators, intervened to crush local MTA unions on strike in 2022, 2023, and 2024. The union’s victories in popular, back-to-back ballot campaigns it supported in 2022 and 2024, also opposed by Healey and state Democratic leadership – the Fair Share Amendment removing the MCAS graduation requirement – cemented organized public educators as a powerful, politically independent force for the Commonwealth’s working class. When the Globe routinely cites Boston-based “free market” think tank Pioneer Institute against teachers’ unions and public education, and a Democratic governor union busts striking local educators desperate for student resources, the political overlap of the settler-colonial (“Pioneer”) project and the anti-union project, both of the bipartisan ruling class, reveals itself. Still, the swift interrogation by the newly formed Special Commission on Antisemitism marked an escalation of manipulative tactics and state repression.
Special Commission on a Zionist Mission
From its inception, it was clear that the Special Commission was, in reality, a Zionist political project cloaked in virtuous language. Activists were quick to criticize the Special Commission for being a Trojan horse for anti-Palestinian repression during its founding. Sixty-four organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace, the Boston Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), UAW Local 2322, and 1,100 individuals, signed onto a June 2024 letter to the legislature requesting that the budget amendment authorizing the Special Commission not pass.
Written signatories also cited a lack of public input, the Special Commission failing to incorporate antisemitism into a generally anti-racist framework, and its adoption of the controversial, ADL-aligned International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition, which labels some criticisms of the state of Israel as a form of anti-Jewish hate, if legitimized by the state, has far-reaching implications on education policy, civil rights protections, and what is considered hate crimes.
Concerns about Israel’s influence over the Special Commission are well-founded. A June 2024 webinar on antisemitism in Mass. public schools, hosted by the Israeli-American Civil Action Network (ICAN) where Sen. Velis was a panelist, was sponsored by extreme Zionist groups such as StandWithUs, the Consulate General of Israel to New England, CAMERA Education Institute, and Christians and Jews United for Israel.
That webinar included a presentation on the alleged antisemitism of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Association (MTA). A group of Zionist rank-and-file MTA members calling themselves Massachusetts Educators Against Antisemitism (MEAA), who have worked to stomp out advocacy for Palestinians in Massachusetts and their union, led the presentation.
Sen. Velis has been on no fewer than three trips to Israel paid for by Israel-affiliated organizations. He emphasizes that these trips do not influence his credibility as Commission co-chair, since he claims to have also spoken to Palestinians on these trips. Still, in an October 2024 panel hosted by ICAN, Velis expressed doubt about well-documented Israeli apartheid and human rights violations. He then waxed about his experience on a tour of an Israeli air missile battery during his latest trip, commenting on the attractiveness of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers:
“I’m thinking it’s gonna be a bunch of U.S. service members coming out, in my mind what U.S. service members look like…and please don’t take this the wrong way…but five of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life walk out…and I couldn’t tell you the first thing about the Iron Dome, because, you know.”
Working Mass applauds Senator Velis for his even-keeled assessment of the situation in Palestine.
Special Commission vs. The MTA
Sen. Velis’s amendment, passed last spring, also instructs the Mass. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to create antisemitism educational curricula for Massachusetts public schools. Under this pretense, the Commission summoned MTA President Max Page and Lexington High teacher Jessica Antoline to testify on February 10th, 2025.
It quickly became clear that the hearing was a setup. What was advertised to MTA leadership as a good-faith dialogue regarding the resource page promptly turned into a McCarthyist inquisition of the MTA, aiming to corner Page and Antoline into “gotcha” soundbites.
The Special Commission’s interrogation focused on an MTA internal list of resources for educators to use to teach a balanced approach to Israel/Palestine with respect to Palestinians’ self-determination. A democratic and popular MTA resolution led to the creation of the list. Sources in MTA tell Working Mass that over 1000 rank-and-file members advanced the resolution democratically, and the MTA’s Board of Directors voted in favor. Retired librarian and MTA member Sue Doherty said that since “most teachers are terrified to teach about this topic,” the resource list was broadly welcomed.
Rep. Cataldo presented a list of images retrieved from secondary links embedded within the resource list and repeatedly demanded that President Page denounce them as antisemitic. He repeatedly ignored Ms. Antoline’s request to present her testimony, pushing it after his presentation. Images selected included an image of Joe Biden with “serial killer” superimposed over him and another image saying “Zionists Fuck Off.” These images were not directly provided to teachers or students, but were found on tangential pages on some of the websites on the resource list. Cataldo presented the images to demonstrate an “anti-Israel” bias within the MTA, pressing Page and Antoline to confirm what he described as the union’s “indoctrination” of students with antisemitic beliefs.
The Special Commission’s hearing was not expected, but not surprising, as rank-and-file MTA members self-organized a powerful pro-Palestine caucus within the union, culminating in a successful resolution to divest their pension fund from military contractors. A simple Google search of ‘MTA antisemitism’ reveals countless articles demonstrating a concerted effort by Zionist organizations to punish the MTA for its pro-Palestine advocacy. The Free Press, an outfit of the Israel hawk Bari Weiss, summed it up in an article titled “Hamassachusetts”.
In the wake of the Special Commission’s interrogation, reactionary forces have capitalized on the MTA’s public flogging to attack public-sector unions writ large. These anti-labor efforts align with Trump’s attacks on federal workers and long-standing warfare against public education through efforts to privatize schools and kneecap educators’ unions. The Special Commission sought to supply the offensive with additional ammo.
Organized Educators Push Back
The attack was, of course, trumped up. Critical facts were left out of the inquisition, like how most of the resources presented were never actually shared with students in the classroom. The resource page includes many optional – not mandated – resources to help instructors learn and teach about Palestine. One of these resources was the website for the organization Artists Against Apartheid, without any specific images attached. The Commission combed through this website and others from the list, found the images it defined as the most antisemitic, and cited them as holistically indicative of the type of resources the MTA provided to its membership.
The Commission cited an infographic about Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer that had an office in Cambridge until recently, due to public outcry, to attack the MTA. However, the infographic was never included in the MTA’s list of resources, nor could it be directly navigated to from the list. This did not prevent Cataldo from attempting to conflate criticism of an Israeli corporation with antisemitism.
At one point, Cataldo asked Page and Antoline to name individuals who had posted pro-Palestine sentiment on their personal social media accounts. An audience member rose and shouted, “Senator McCarthy, how is this any different than naming names of coworkers and associates during the 1950s Red Scare?” The crowd erupted in rapturous applause. Cataldo pounded his gavel to restore order and stated, “That was a nice remark from a former teacher of mine who taught Marxism class.”
As members of the MTA rank-and-file pro-Palestine caucus documented in an exhaustive report they submitted to the Special Commission in response to the February 10th hearing, the co-chairs’ cherry-picked “exhibits” may have criticized Israel and/or Zionism, but they were not antisemitic. The report also analyzes how the line of questioning and many of the images shown promoted anti-Palestinian racism. Merrie Najimy, former MTA president and organizer with MTA Rank and File for Palestine, later testified with a community group at the hearing:
As an Arab-American educator, I bring to my teaching my own experience with racism, that very racism that I just experienced here. My watch went off, telling me my heart rate was elevated to 122.
Deep connections between Jewish labor and the MTA challenge the Special Commission’s incredulous charge of antisemitism to attack the union. Page himself is the child of a Jewish refugee from WW2-era Nazi terror. And three different MTA locals were recently honored by the New England Jewish Labor Committee for their courage in going on strike, technically illegally as public sector workers and with the opposition of Gov. Healey, at the 2025 Labor Seder in Boston.
These facts complicate the Special Commission’s politically motivated smear campaign and highlight the absurdity of lecturing a first-generation descendant of Jewish refugees about antisemitism. As Page and Antoline continuously reiterated, teachers have the critical thinking skills to understand that a poster saying ‘Zionists Fuck Off’, on its own, with no context, is not relevant to the classroom. The labor leader argued:
Our highly educated teachers and other education professionals – creative individuals who have dedicated their lives to building a culture of learning for young people – are not robots who would somehow be brainwashed by a single set of resources.
Leaders of Jewish communities have also stepped up against the politically weaponized overreach of the Special Commission. On March 31st, 90 local rabbis and Jewish community leaders wrote arguing that the Special Commission’s activity was contributing to President Trump’s free speech crackdown under the pretense of combating antisemitism.
Elsa Auerbach, a professor emeritus at UMass Boston, MTA member, Boston Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) member, and one of the signatories of the letter, added that the trajectory of the Commission seems like a giant missed opportunity:
I will not project the intent of the Commission. But, Massachusetts has the opportunity to be the model to fight antisemitism in the current historical moment … clearly framed as a Commission which stands against white supremacy… After the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia, I read that some rabbis were saying the suffering of Jews was being co-opted for an antisemitic agenda. That is the framing I’d like to see the commission looking at.
In Defense of Union Democracy and Public Education
Educators are fighting not only to keep the democratic will of their union’s membership respected in the face of the Special Commission’s attack, but also, as they are obligated to do by their profession, to teach facts. The death count in Gaza is estimated to be over 200,000, more than one in every two buildings is destroyed, and its entire living population is currently on a trajectory to starve to death. Constantly, Palestinians are told to put their lived experience as secondary to narratives mandated by polite society, when the reality is depravity that can never be truly articulated or taught. During a genocide facilitated by our United States government, and with our taxpayer money, it’s no surprise that organized educators are determined to uphold truth. Doherty summed it up:
Silencing the truth about the history of Israel and Palestine and marginalizing the experiences of Palestinian students and their families doesn’t do a thing to help fight antisemitism or make Jewish students safe.
Chris B is a DSA member, public sector union member and contributor to Working Mass.
